For the past few days, I've been in Tulsa, Oklahoma, attending the annual Singfest event hosted by promoter Frank Arnold. In addition to promoting the magazine, I've also been recording interviews for some upcoming special Singing News features.

Lauren Talley sat in the interviewee (is that a word?) chair yesterday and we talked about a lot of the "other" things that go into having a successful Southern Gospel group. One of the things she and I talked about at length was how easily an emcee can make or break a group. It wasn't long before we started comparing lists of who we thought were Southern Gospel music's greatest group emcees.

We talked about many of the emcees we've seen in our lifetime. As you might expect, George Younce topped both of our lists. In fact, we both placed George in an entire class by himself. Neither one of us could really think of anyone who matched George's ability to make 20,000 people think he was talking to each one of them individually at the same time. A true gift, he had.

Then we started adding to the list and we thought of about seven or eight people who are either a great emcee OR is in the process of becoming a great emcee. The more we talked, the more we came to the conclusion that there is going to be a small handful that will stand out among the rest.

I've said all of that to get to this point: Who do you think are Southern Gospel music's greatest emcees? Now, I'm not talking about a radio personality who might be emceeing a concert - instead, I'm talking about someone who is performing as a part of a group or is a soloist.

Send in your names and if you so desire, give some supporting reasons why you believe the person you named is the one of the best. I look forward to reading your comments.

Oh, by the way, in case you're wondering about the names Lauren and I came up with... well, I'll give you that list later!